About Brum

This time, prepare to welcome BloggingBrum to the world, a product of the creative mind of one Mark Steadman… What’s it about? “It’s a blog for Birmingham. That’s it.”

Succint. I like it. (Bonus points for having a picture of the Floozie in the Jacuzzi as part of the design!)

I’m always in favour of new outlets for the wealth of news and info that flows out of the second city – that’s why you’ll see me contributing to it in due course. In the meantime, blogroll it, bookmark the feed, and enjoy.

And as a little PS, here’s an odd thought which may strike a chord with all you WordPress users out there – why does WP have an ‘Uncategorized’ category by default? Surely it’s a little tautologous; if you didn’t want to classify a post, you would just refrain from ticking any of the boxes. Programmers’ logic overriding common sense once again…

I suppose one of the advantages of promoting Birmingham and the West Midlands is that you hear about some stuff before others… I received an email from the PR department at the Town Hall, promoting their forthcoming festival under the “English Originals” moniker… I’ve been known to be a little partial to a bit of English Folk music (thanks to my Dad for that influence), so I might even pop along and check them out.

    Johnny King I commend the Town Hall for putting on an event such as this; English Folk Music has been neglected for a long time, which is sad considering there’s so much richness, culture and heritage carried in the music. Many other countries overtly celebrate and promote their folk music, so why are we, as English people, so averse to enjoying it more? Granted, I can’t listen to folk music for hours and hours on end, but there’s something very compelling about songs which, aside from the tireless efforts of a minority, remain solely as songs passed down from generation to generation with no written record.

The BBC’s always been good about promoting folk music, and they still maintain their coverage of Folk Music on broadcast radio, TV (the Folk Awards comes to mind) and the Web. However, even their coverage has been diminishing, with fewer and fewer plays on regional and local radio. A shame, but not necessarily inevitable. So, it’s good to see this kind of event being organised in Birmingham, at a really great venue – there’s some free gigs and even a film screening, apparently – can’t argue with that. The event is billed as, “a celebration of English folk music traditions with invited artists from all four corners of the country performing, as well as free gigs and a film screening. The whole ethos behind the festival is to dispel the misconceptions many people have of folk and put on show the many cross-genre collaborations and cultural partnerships developing within folk music in England.”

I’m down with that.

That said, the best part of the email has to be the supplied pack shots, including the lovely reclining Lisa Knapp:

What a press shot!

Also, hot on the heels of Creative Republic’s launch, the Birmingham Music Network site’s undergone a redesign and is now available to the public. (Hat-tip to Boy Wonder Records for the heads-up.)

Birmingham’s a bit of a higgledy-piggledy place when it comes to architecture. You have brash, modern buildings parked opposite 1980s ‘oddities’, which themselves are next to to clean lines and glass frontage of Starbucks and office buildings… And on top of that, you have the old, OLD buildings that were in Birmingham long before anybody else decided to move in and build the latest multi-storey hotel with a weird leopard-skin cover down one side (if you’ve seen the SAS Radisson, you’ll know what I’m on about).

This photo, taken by Bill Phillips, quite neatly sums it all up:

Image credit: Bill Phillips

I know from personal experience just how hard it is to take good shots in the centre of Brum, the contrast between light and shade around there is so extreme that if you have a less-than-great camera, you end up with half a screen of barely visible image and an overexposed remainder.

If you’re wondering where the above shot was taken, get off the bus at Colmore Row, walk to the left (heading away from Snowhill railway station), cross the road, then turn right 90°… Bingo.

Seen any other nice shots of Brum? I’d love to see them, so leave your links in the Comments.

In typical style, I’m fashionably late writing about this. Just like I was to the actual event. Note to self: update satnav maps (I drove straight to Brum from work via a route I don’t normally travel via – the bloody thing tried to take me the wrong way around two separate one-way systems, one in Wolverhampton and another one in Brum!) Anyway, I got there, and I wasn’t to worry, because people were there way after I said my goodbyes and headed home.

If you didn’t turn up on Monday night at the Dragon Inn, you missed out – around 30 bloggers and creative types descended on the pub for an evening of spontaneous conversation, anecdotes and other small issues… things like the future of blogging in and about the West Midlands, and how to promote the region outside of the clique of Birmingham bloggers (paraphrased from Podnosh’s Nick Booth, or Mr. Nosh as I think I might call him from now on).

Read the rest of this entry »

Unless something dire happens to obstruct my attendance, you can find me (along with a bunch of other friendly locals) at the second Brum Bloggers Meetup. I’ll give you fair warning now… It’s nestled just at the top end of the Gaybourhood (as my lesbian housemate calls it, and the name just happens to have caught on in our house, so that’s our name for Hurst Street). Whenever she nips down to The Fox on Hurst Street, I like to say that she’s ‘got a thirst for Hurst’, but I get odd stares and I suddenly feel the need to leave the room. You decide on that one.

To be fair, The Dragon Inn is actually nestled in The Arcadian Centre, so it’s almost separate – to get to the Arcadian car park, you just drive down (up?) Hurst Street and the entrance is there. Parking costs, according to the company which runs it, are about £1-£1.20 an hour, so put aside a fiver for parking if you’re driving there (like I’ll have to).

Now, for the brave, here are the event details:

Name: Brum bloggers Meetup 2
Tagline: or the first Birmingham Social Media Cafe?
Host: Birmingham Bloggers UK

Type: Meetings – Club/Group Meeting
Date: Monday, February 18, 2008
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Location: The Dragon Inn

Address:
Hurst Street
B5 4TD
Birmingham

Map: View

See you there!

Now, before we get started, I’m by no means a Microsoft shill (the Ubuntu sticker on my laptop should indicate that, that’s another discussion entirely however so let’s not go there). But, one thing I do like though are the pockets of resistance within Microsoft’s ranks; one such division is the development team who work on stuff like the Live project – Live Maps being one of the jewels in the crown. Obviously tons of money was poured into the project to make it a competitor for Google Maps, but it’s actually got some pretty standout features.

Someone told me that they’d revamped the interface, and he has – it’s now got far more “bird’s eye” views for the UK than it did previously. More interestingly, it’s got quite comprehensive bird’s eye views for all over the centre of Brum – but they’re at least two years’ old Still, if you’ve never been to Birmingham, it’s an easy way to get a much better idea of what the city looks like. I even did my route from my house to the Bullring in a spare five minutes

To get you started, here’s a link which’ll zoom you right in to the former Birmingham Eye (in front of the ICC, on Broad Street) – if you move left, you get to a large roundabout, also the location of UCE’s Birmingham Conservatoire (well, now BCU’s Conservatoire, but I still don’t acknowledge last year’s namechange) and, to the left of that, Victoria Square – but the beauty is you can always switch to overhead mode and get the street names! Top tip with Live Maps: you can change your orientation too, so you get a completely different perspective which can also help you look round tall buildings – click the N, S, E or W letters to rotate your view.

I’ve also collected together some of the city centre landmarks into a collection on Live Maps called Christopher’s Brum Landmarks, so you can spend a while browsing round and seeing what’s what and what’s where, as such – there are far more comprehensive listings and I encourage you to search around the subject (the ‘Explore Collections’ feature in Live Maps is your friend here!) but these landmarks should get you started. There’s a really comprehensive compilation of landmarks which someone has uploaded onto the Keyhole forums (and Live Maps has spidered, and can display) – to view it, click through to Birmingham Folder.kmz on Live Maps, or click here to load it directly.

I put loads of landmarks into my own Google Earth collection, but as I couldn’t get them to save in a single .kmz file I just kept them in Google Earth’s temporary files – but then lost them all when I upgraded Google Earth. I’ve not gotten round (as yet) to fully recreating this list, so apologies for the awful gaps in the Live Maps collection (I’ve not even put a pushpin into my own University faculty building! (it’s the TIC inside Millennium Point on Curzon Street)). However, I’ll add more landmarks to my own collection as I get time to do so, but as I’m avoiding doing work right now you’re all quite lucky – that’s an hour of quality time I just put into aggregating that list of landmarks!

Well, you’re in luck.

In a somewhat meta presentation at Town Hall, due to take place on Sunday the 20th of January at 2pm, a chap called Anthony Peers is going to deliver “an account of the architectural history of Town Hall from its construction through to it recent renaissance.” Apparently, “Anthony has been researching the history of the building for close to a decade and was involved in the planning of the recently completed scheme of repairs and improvements.”

Unfortunately I’m not in Birmingham that weekend – drat! However, it sounds really quite interesting, and it’s only £6 (£5 if you’re over 60, although I bet they have student concessions going if you ask nicely)… So, there’s no real excuse for you to avoid this talk if you’re truly interested in the redevelopment and reopening of one of Birmingham’s largest and best-known landmarks.

And, as a bonus, click the image above to get a full-sized version, taken (and stitched together) by yours truly. Enjoy

“Reinvigorating Longbridge’s industrial heritage while also attracting new hi-tech investors and companies will also play an important role in cementing the area’s status as the real engine room for a prosperous and ever-growing Midlands economy, able to compete on an international stage.”– Mike Whitby, Birmingham City Council leader

A smattering of pre-new-year goods news, I suppose… From BBC News, this morning:

Up to 10,000 jobs could be created and 1,400 homes and a shopping centre built to renovate part of Birmingham affected when a car plant closed down. About 6,000 workers lost their jobs in Longbridge when MG Rover collapsed in April 2005. Now a total of £500m could be spent if the 15-year plan goes ahead.

Government ministers have already outlined plans for a £20m innovation centre in the area which will make up part of that redevelopment. The plans are being developed by the Birmingham City, Worcestershire County and Bromsgrove Councils. Council leaders said they hoped the 15-year transformation of the area would encourage more people back to Longbridge.

Under the plans Longbridge railway station would also be revamped and Bournville College would also be relocated to the area.

£500 million? That’s not petty cash. I wonder where they’re going to get it from… Higher taxes? Or, perhaps they’ll get lucky with some ERDF/EUSF funding? One hopes for the latter but I think it’d be ill-advised to expect anything but the former. I definitely know that the only thing I’ve seen in the way of progress since Nanjing bought Longbridge is a near-total asset strip of the property, combined with a bit of bulldozing and, earlier this year, a VIP tour for some of the Nanjing execs around Birmingham centre (culminating in a ceremony attended by the Chinese, Council members and a the Press), so not much in the way of positive improvement has happened yet. I don’t even think any car production has been restarted there yet, which was their aim, wasn’t it?

 Or maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Anyway, my favourite bit from the article:

‘Determined to succeed’
A museum called the Austin Heritage Centre has also been proposed, which would celebrate the area’s history in car-making.

Woohoo! That’ll get the tourists rolling in!

First things first: I immensely dislike Christmas and everything it’s come to stand for… except for Chocolate Oranges in my stocking on Christmas Day. Mmm. However, I’m more than willing to promote events based around this season, because no doubt there’s far more people who aren’t grouchy old grumpies who actually enjoy these events! So, here’s a quick summary of what’s going on this Christmas (well, November) in Brum:

The Birmingham Christmas Lights Switch-On concert is being held from 3pm-7pm in front of Millennium Point on the 10th of November. If you’re wondering where Millennium Point is, it’s the building housing the IMAX cinema just down past the Masshouse building (basically, stand with your back to Selfridges, walk down the long straight Queensway and then bear right slightly, walking down the hill, you’ll get there in five minutes. Billed acts include McFly, Leona Lewis, Scouting For Girls and Sugababes get to turn the lights on on at 7:30pm. Wouldn’t want to miss that. The MAXMIX Diwali Celebrations take place on the 11th of November, and are again in front of Millennium Point from 3-7pm.

Here’s the best bit: the stuff-of-legend Pantomime Horse Race! The Panto Horse Grand National is always the talk of the town and draws some sizeable crowds if the weather’s not crap! It also helps raise some money for Children In Need, so it’s for a very worthwhile cause. There’s usually some foam too, so if you’re going either as a participant or a spectator, prepare to get messy.

This year, the race is taking place on the 16th of November, from 6:30pm-10pm (and although I’d guess the route is still via Colmore Row, finishing just over from the Town Hall, the official listing is “Broad Street / Centenary Square”). There’s also a very pretty-looking Broad Street Canal Boat Light Parade being held on the 9th of December along the canal running from the NIA to The Mailbox (from 5:30pm to 6:15pm). I might head along to that to take some snaps. I know it’s short notice, but I only just found out myself!

So, weather permitting, use these events as an excuse to get out the house and enjoy some pre-December Christmas niceties, courtesy of various local businesses and your City Council. And don’t forget to say thankyou afterwards.